THE LISTENING BIENNIAL

zeropowercut (India) “bujhat naikhe can’t understand” (2024) Written as a reflection on masculinity, the song is about a person scouring for themself in a straw hut they have built. The song, in Bhojpuri language, explores Nirgun : a form of thinking and singing (an art form and a philosophy). Briefly put, Nirgun is to recognize the world and things as ungraspable, and thus, to practice intelligen...

YIM Sui Fong (Hong Kong) “Black Ghost Trail” (2025) How can sound or sound play conjure memories or re-materialize feelings of a place? Inspired by the childhood experiences of a resident from the local Hakka village of Chuen Lung in Hong Kong during the 60s and 70s, this work explores his young life among natural and man-made elements, such as a stream from Tai Mo Mountain, a hill road full of wi...

Valentina Villarroel (Chile) “They are my voices” (2025) They are my voices, fragments of an infinite fabric.  I merge with the whisper of the leaves, with the distant song of the trains, with the liquid cadence of the rain. I imitate, I repeat, I reinvent myself. Valentina Villarroel is a sound artist and phonographer who explores the intricate dynamics within various southern ecosystems. Her wor...

Irazema H. Vera (Peru) “Puna (Del quechua, del māori)” (2025) Es manantial y también la región de las alturas andinas. El inicio, la fuente que fluye, la ligereza de estar cerca del cielo. / It is a spring, and also the region of the Andean heights. The beginning, the flowing fountain, the lightness of being close to heaven. In this piece, I explore the sounds of memory and connection: the ones...

Superlative Futures (Singapore) “听潮 [the sound of impermanence]: Finding Putuo” (2025) 15 February 2025, Singapore. 7.30pm, low tides at +0.30m. We left the city in the hope of finding Putuo—but not the geographical place of the mountain (that is also an island) as the name refers to. Instead, it was a metaphorical Putuo that we found in the shifting edges of an intertidal landscape that comes v...

Ruhail Qaisar (Ladakh) “ZANGRNAMS” (2025) “In front of me the primeval sky, void, emptiness A black wind rises and swirls, fire blazes The fierce red spirit of the gorge appears before me In the centre of his forehead the eye of primordial awareness Donning a scarlet cloak, he stands atop a red a godly horse He stabs my heart And blood spills forth like the currents of an ocean” The idea behind th...

Amanda Piña (Chile/México/Austria) “To listen with the hands. A practice for decolonizing the senses” (2025) This is a practice, a guided trip, an experiment in the decolonization of the senses. It works through sound on how touch and attention can transform the way we feel, think and be. On how the senses can be used otherwise and what this does to our perception. In my work I often do guided p...

Lujáne Vaqar Pagganwala (Pakistan/United Kingdom) “Anatomy Of A Breathing Exercise” (2024) "Anatomy Of A Breathing Exercise" acts as a sonic representation of an attempt to materialize intimate spaces of the Self and its belonging. Stemming from the artist’s Humming Project, the sounds from the harmonica in the work were the results of a series of breathing exercises she performed while placing t...

Jacqueline Nova (Belgium/Colombia) “Creación de la tierra” (1972) "Creación de la tierra" is a piece that can be classified as “tape music” or “electroacoustic music for fixed media”; however, the composer consistently emphasized describing it as a work “for electronically transformed voice”. It was composed using archival material, featuring a fragment of one of the chants of the creation of th...

Graciela Muñoz (Chile) “In a cloud” (2025) "In a cloud” emerged from the Omora forest, in the sub-Antarctic region of Chile, in 2025. At that time, we experimented with field recordings and transmissions: signals, feedback, and transfers in interconnections with insects, mosses, lichens, and objects found there. “In a cloud” is a fragment of that immersive experience.  Graciela Muñoz (Chile, 198...

Yara Mekawei (Egypt) “Feed on Wasted Energy” (2025) A plate: rice, tomato, broccoli, grapes— bacon’s grease bleeding into pomegranate molasses. Arugula wilts under the weight of silence. Three girls. A man of forty winters. Yellow light pools behind him, a dim coronet, as he dissects his meal—slow, methodical— unmoved by untouched plates, by glances stitched in secret between daughters. Years grin...

Imaad Majeed (Sri Lanka) “Questions of Jailani” (2025) "Questions of Jailani" is a sound-based artwork that explores the contested sacred site of Dafther Jailani in Kuragala, Sri Lanka– a place where overlapping mythologies, militarized nationalism, and religious orthodoxy converge to distort plural histories. Once an overflowing Sufi shrine, Jailani has become a battleground of authenticity– Sinh...

Elena Lucca (Argentina) “Habitar, Cohabitar, Rehabitar para el Reencantamiento” (2025) The song, the word, the wind, the night, the movement, the sound of the voice, the silence, the calm, other voices dialoguing, a space where everything happens in a musical moment, which recalls “l’ environnement suspended ou l'épochè” by Jean-François Augoyard (1990), the elision, the suspension of perceptua...

Subash Thebe Limbu (Limbuwan, Nepal/United Kingdom) “Sound Recordings of Time Travellers” (2025) This work incorporates both used and unused sounds from the artist’s previous pieces Ningwasum (2021) and Ladhamba Tayem; Future Continuous (2023), as well as materials from unrealized projects. Both earlier works feature time travelers from the Indigenous Yakthung (Limbu) Nation of the distant future:...

Nicole L’Huillier (Chile/Germany) “Vientos colectivos” (2025) La Orejona interacts with phenomena such as sound waves in the air, caresses from the wind, tremors from the ground, and oscillations induced by touch from both human and non-human entities. In contrast to regular modern microphones that are made to target individual signals, La Orejona operates with the purpose of weaving independent s...

Okui Lala (Malaysia), Ana Estrada (Mexico/Australia), and Nasrikah (Indonesia/ Malaysia) “Re-Listening Care” (2025) "Re-Listening Care" revisits "Re-Imagining the Workplace" (2024), a live performance created by Okui Lala, Ana Estrada, and Nasrikah, in collaboration with caregivers Uli, Arni, Ryanie, Diane, Leeanne, Madison, Rosie, Dipin, and Khushi. Originally performed on December 1, 2024, at QA...

LSAC (Lagos Sound Artists Collective) (Nigeria) “Perceptions” (2025) In some parts of the world, thousands of children are exploited in illegal operations, particularly in the extraction of cobalt, gold, and other valuable minerals that are crucial for global industries, including electronics and electric vehicle batteries. However, much of this mining occurs under dangerous and unregulated condit...

Lynn Nandar Htoo (Myanmar/Cambodia) “Neural Net Nocturne” (2025) The concept of “home” extends far beyond physical boundaries, encompassing the complexity of memories, cultural touchstones, and deeply ingrained emotional connections. It's the scent of familiar spices wafting through the air, the rhythmic cadence of a native tongue, the shared rituals that bind generations. These intangible element...

Shwe Wutt Hmon (Myanmar/Thailand) “Noises Are Quite Loud Here” (2023-ongoing) This project began as a spontaneous response to my transition from urban life, heightening my awareness of nature's subtleties—plants, animals, and landscapes. It also reflects my ongoing exploration of various forms of "NOISE," from the hallucinated sounds I battle to the suffocating air pollution during Chiang Mai's no...

Hear & Found (Thailand) “Earthsong: Indigenous Harmony from Thailand (Nature soundscape from rotation farming at Maeporkee community)” (2024) Recorded in the Maeporkee community in Tak province, Northern Thailand, this soundscape captures a significant aspect of the Karen people's traditional way of life: rotational farming, a method rooted in regenerative nature and sustainability. Rotational...

MycoDyke (India) “As Above, So Below” (2025) This work is an attempt to hold space for ecological mourning. My practice – and my life – is rooted in fungi and decomposition, through which I’ve come to understand death as a transition: a process that nourishes, reshapes, redistributes, regenerates. But in the summer of 2025, Delhi experienced an early and catastrophic monsoon. Trees died in great n...

Mariana Pinto Coelho Dias (Portugal) “Resonances of an Unheard Body” (2025) Through sound, bodies expand beyond their visible contours. Following this line of thought, we can say that the “voice” is an extension of our body. This reflection leads us to question the limits of the extension of a human body: how far does a body extend? Who and what are part of it? What are the layers of its existence...

CHONG Li-Chuan (Singapore) “On any given day” (2025) On any given day, a city hums with the sounds of its own forgetting, Hong Lim Complex, once a site of forced separations and uncertain fates, now stands absorbed into daily life. In 1942, it bore witness to selections that determined who would walk free and who would disappear. Given by whom? Taken from whom? In CHONG Li-Chuan’s “On any given da...

Kaur Chimuk (India) “Mourn!ng : A fermented ritual for the mundane spirits from Shunyosthan” Kaur Chimuk in ritual with Amy Singh X Pramukho Rupan X RENU (2025) Imagine a prolonged absence— perhaps mis/un/post-heard—where Mourn!ng does not arrive all at once, but ferments with pauses from within our most mundane “moments”. This slow fermentation distills time into memory, leaving us curved into a...

Rachel S.Y. CHEN (Singapore) “my tiny space” (2025)  What does it mean to connect with another human being? Connection begins with creating a tiny space: a gentle, intentional opening where difference can be held, and lived experiences can meet. This piece gathers intimate sonic traces born from the world of non-speaking autistic individuals and their families. The piece begins with field recordin...